


please...

by escapismandsharpobjects



Category: White Collar
Genre: "Get it out", Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Hurt Neal Caffrey, Hurt/Comfort, Whump, Whumptober 2020, hopefully that comes thru anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:47:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26867653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escapismandsharpobjects/pseuds/escapismandsharpobjects
Summary: whumptober day 6 - prompt: "get it out" Neal gets shot while chasing a suspect with Peter.
Relationships: Peter Burke & Neal Caffrey
Comments: 14
Kudos: 89
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	please...

**Author's Note:**

> hi!! welcome to this fic which may not be very good i am so so tired lmao...anyway i'm going to talk now bc who can stop me...anyway i just submitted my first application for anything college related (a scholarship) and aaaaaaa...very stressful but at least it's done...anyway i am going to shut up now and let u get to the story!! hope u enjoy :)

Peter and Neal ran through a dilapidated old warehouse, chasing down a suspect. It’d been an unexpected turn of events which had led to this chase, and therefore only the two of them had been present. Which was unfortunate, because had there been more agents, they could have split up and cornered the man. As it was, though, they’d decided to stick together, a move they both regretted when the man pulled out a gun, firing wildly behind him in their general direction.

Peter and Neal both hit the ground. Peter jumped back to his feet immediately after the shooting ended, cursing under his breath as the suspect disappeared through a hole in the wall. He knew there was no way of catching the man now, but he had to try, at least. 

Or he  _ would  _ have tried, had it not been for a hand around his ankle, which nearly pulled him to the ground. He stumbled around in an awkward half-circle and found himself looking down at Neal, curled into a ball, blood soaking through his clothes.

“You got shot?” Peter asked, which maybe wasn’t the smartest question to ask, but he had to make sure. Some small part of him hoped, somehow, that  _ he’d  _ been the one who’d gotten shot, and his blood had just happened to drip down onto Neal. 

But the young conman muttered an affirmative, reaching out and trying to grab onto Peter once again. 

Peter knelt down next to him, quickly stripping off his jacket and balling it up. 

“Where?” he asked, expecting Neal to uncurl himself and show him, or at the very least remain curled up and  _ tell  _ him.

No such luck. Neal shook his head, curling himself into an even tighter ball, which couldn’t possibly have been good for his wound. 

“Neal, I need to know where he shot you.”

Neal muttered something intelligible.

“Neal, buddy, I know it hurts, but you need to enunciate. Where did you say?”

“Get it out,” Neal said, half-whispering, half-whining.  _ “Please, _ Peter.”

“I can’t,” Peter said, in the tones of someone who knew what he was doing. “That would only make it worse.”

He grabbed his cell phone, silently thanking  _ something  _ that it hadn’t been crushed when he’d hit the ground. He dialed 911 and explained the situation, once again prompting Neal about where exactly he’d been shot.

“He won’t say,” Peter told the operator. “I’m guessing he’s in shock. I’m going to try to stop the bleeding, but you need to hurry.”

He didn’t know for sure how bad the injury was, but something told him it had to be pretty serious - not that getting shot was ever  _ not  _ serious, but this seemed like a more dangerous wound than some of the others he’d seen.

“Neal, you really need to let me see where he shot you. I have to stop the bleeding.”

“Get it out,” Neal repeated. “I can’t...bullet in me…”

“I know there’s a bullet in you,” Peter said, “and I want it out as much as you do. But let’s let a doctor take care of that, okay?”

Neal shook his head. “Now, Peter,  _ please.” _

_ I really didn’t want to have to do this, _ Peter thought at Neal. “I don’t have a choice, then,” he said, and forced Neal’s form to uncurl, a significantly easier task than he imagined it would usually be. 

Neal made a soft, sad noise of protest, but Peter ignored it, distracted by the wound, finally in full view, and  _ not  _ pretty. 

A neat hole tore into Neal’s abdomen, blood pooling out of it at an alarming rate. As Neal had insisted, the bullet was still in him, shining beneath the sea of red.

“This is gonna hurt, buddy. Sorry,” Peter apologized, and before Neal could react, he shoved his balled-up jacket against the wound, holding it down as tightly as he could.

Neal screamed, and then fell into silence, panting, and then began to cry, yet again begging, “please,  _ please, _ Peter, get it out!”

It broke Peter’s heart to ignore Neal’s fervent pleas, but he (and the 911 operator, who had confirmed the actions he should take) knew what to do, and he understood the gravity of the situation far more than Neal could hope to at the moment.

But he couldn’t ignore Neal completely. Not when he was sobbing and bleeding out on the floor of an abandoned warehouse that they’d only been checking out mere minutes before. He put a hand on Neal’s cheek, using the other one to maintain pressure on the wound.

“It’s going to be okay, Neal.”

Neal’s hands flung up weakly, trying to push Peter’s jacket off of his wound. “Peter...get it out,” he insisted, shoving Peter’s hand desperately. 

Peter removed his hand from Neal’s face and caught Neal’s hands instead, bringing them away from the jacket. He held onto one, deciding to provide tactile comfort in lieu of verbal assurances, which hadn’t seemed to do much.

The touch seemed to help slightly, because Neal stopped struggling against him. But Peter found that the resignation was almost worse - now, Neal was just  _ lying  _ there, crying and bleeding and looking so,  _ so  _ young. “Hate guns,” he whispered, and Peter felt his heart cracking even more, and tightened his grip on Neal’s hand.

_ He won’t die, _ he thought, and wished he could make himself believe it.  _ He can’t die.  _

Neal seemed to at least agree with him on this front, stopping his tears momentarily to ask, with startling clarity, “am I going to die?”

“No,” Peter promised, hoping the words didn’t sound as hollow as they felt.

“You can’t...you really can’t get it out?” Neal’s tears started falling again, and Peter felt one of his own drip down his nose. 

“I can’t,” he confirmed softly, squeezing Neal’s hand.

“But...they will, right? At the-” he cut himself off with a cough that splattered blood at the corners of his mouth.

_ The ambulance needs to get here now, _ Peter thought desperately, not daring to voice his concern.

Neal looked up at him, his eyes blown even wider with fear, breath heaving. “I’m going to die,” he said, and it wasn’t a question. Another tear ran down his cheek, mingling with the blood, turning it pink.

Peter shook his head, not trusting himself to speak.  _ What am I going to do? _ he wondered, distantly. 

And then, also distantly, he heard the nicest sound he’d ever heard: an ambulance siren. And just a few seconds later, three paramedics were bustling around, peeling Neal and Peter apart, shuttling them into an ambulance, and it was a mess of blood and shouting and confusion, but then the doors shut, and the ambulance started moving, and Peter felt the hope return to his voice when he returned a hand to Neal’s hair and said, “you’re going to be okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading this!!!! i hope u enjoyed it, please tell me what you think!! i am going to bed now and i hope that whoever is reading this has a lovely whatever time of day it may be!!  
> (also just to make it clear neal does Not Die he is fine after the story ends...eventually)


End file.
